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About

Thousands of unpaid scientists are fed up with name-calling bullies and rent-seekers. A perfectly good civilization is going to waste

Jo won prizes as a science grad and international awards as a blogger. She’s author of The Skeptics Handbook which has been translated into 15 languages. Each day 5,000 people read joannenova.com.au. In 2018 Jo toured Europe speaking about How to Destroy an Electricity Grid. Before blogging she hosted a children’s TV series on Channel Nine, was a regular keynote speaker, and managed the Shell Questacon Science Circus. She was an associate lecturer in Science Communication at ANU. At one time she helped fundraise for The Australian Greens. Then she grew up.

Andrew Bolt described her writing as “outstanding”, and called one piece “a magnificant polemic.” She’s been quoted by her heroes James Delingpole, Christopher Booker, and Mark Steyn. She’s been blamed for the collapse of the ETS and named in the Australian Parliament. The Oxfam report on ClimateGate news improbably listed her blog influence as being equal to NASA in the Climategate email saga. The Wheeler Centre in Melbourne listed Jo Nova as the balancing counterpoint to the combined scientific weight of The UN and government departments. Such praise!Her blog won Best Topical Blog of 2015, The LifeTime Achievement Award in the 2014 Bloggies and Best Australian and New Zealand Blog in 2012. About 600,000 people visit the site each year. Jo is a regular guest on Outsiders on SkyNews every second Wednesday with Rowan Dean.

She has presented speeches across Australia, in New York, Washington, Munich, Oslo and London.

A prize-winning science graduate in molecular biology. She has given keynotes about the medical revolution, gene technology and aging at conferences. She hosted a children’s TV series on Channel Nine, and has done over 200 radio interviews, many on the Australian ABC. She was formerly an associate lecturer in Science Communication at the ANU.

She is married to Dr David Evans, the Stanford PhD in fourier analysis, former leading carbon modeler for the Australian Greenhouse Office. They support their own research and writing. At the moment they are living largely off donations from readers (Thank you!) and are based in Perth, Western Australia.

Why the blog?

In 2008 Jo was dismayed that the good brand-name of science was being exploited and wrote The Skeptics Handbook pro bono. Some 220,000 copies of the Handbook were published worldwide and were distributed to the Australian Parliament and US congressmen. It was so popular that volunteers translated it into French, German (twice), Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Turkish, Japanese, Danish, Czech, Portuguese, Italian, Balkan, Spanish, Lao and Thai. Her paper Climate Money was the first to document the unprecedented rise of volunteer auditors and independent scientists and the massive one-sided way government funding worked to distort science: supporters of the man-made climate catastrophe had been paid 3,500 times as much as skeptics. She was among the first to spotlight the influential role of banks and financial houses who had a major stake in carbon trading. Banks want to save the world. Who knew?

The Blog

Jo Nova was one of the four heretics mentioned by Matt Ridley in his summation of the global effort to separate science from pseudoscience.

“The remarkable thing about the heretics I have mentioned is that every single one is doing this in his or her spare time. They work for themselves, they earn a pittance from this work. There is no great fossil-fuel slush fund for sceptics”.

A varied career

Jo Nova is the stage name of Joanne Codling. She took up the name in 1998 for privacy reasons when she started work with Channel Nine as the host of the childrens TV series Y?. Her first full time job at age 22 was as manager of the half million dollar exhibition called the Shell Questacon Science Circus with a team of twelve. She spent five years touring Australia with hands-on science. As an associate lecturer at ANU Joanne helped to develop the Graduate Diploma in Science Communication in its earliest years. She put her favourite hands-on science experiments in the book Serious Science Party Tricks.

Joanne has also managed programs bringing hands-on science to street kids in Melbourne and remote Aboriginal communities as well as earning money as a cartoonist, graphic designer and illustrator. She is into liberty, medical research, money, history, and climate science, as well as anthropology, Austrian economics, and the trajectory of great civilizations.

Joanne Nova lives in Perth, Australia. She welcomes comments (not spam) email: joanne AT joannenova.com.au (replace the ‘AT’ with’@’ to foil nasty agents.) She received no funding for the first Skeptics Handbook or to create this site. Donations help to cover costs, and made the second Handbook possible in late 2009. She and her husband are self employed.

Her phone number is unlisted, she does not live in Bateman or Palmyra. (Please don’t phone them!).

More details about her speaking, TV, radio work and qualifications here.

72 comments to About

[...] “Professional Speaker” turned climate expert Nova rehashes two of the more common skeptic talking points, that: the world is no longer warming and the Vostok ice core record proves that rising CO2 emissions are not… [...]

[...] written not by a practicing researcher of course, but by a woman named Jo Nova whose past vocations included hosting of children’s program in Australia and touring Australia with a “science [...]

The Australian Government/DFAT government are looking to sell us out to the overseas corporations once and for all by signing up with this Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement – Free Trade.

Are you able to contact all your other contacts/links because there is a deadline for Submissions mid July 2012.

Big Business mainly overseas entities operating in Australia have put in submissions approving this agreement but its all to the detriment of Australian Sovereignty and its people. Basically it surrenders powers to large corporations and gives them more power over our land including resources etc. Please look into it because they are having a meeting in August in Sydney however there is a deadline this month for submissions. Because its so secret most people are not aware of it and my submission will have no weight.

Hi, enjoy your site which I am just getting to know better (I’m a regular at BH and CA and WUWT).

I know you have bigger fish to fry with the carbon tax etc. but if you know of any journalists or bloggers who might be interested, I think there seem to be some bizarre statements and behaviors associated with David Karoly, the Australian Book Review, and also of course the larger context of the dubious Gergis et al (2012) paper. For just the most recent examples:

Hi, your statement that you would not like to see a good civilization go to waste rings true for me also. I have spent the good part of seven years researching to find out why we are in the mess we are in. Even though conditions are improving in the human world we are still in grave danger of going down the same path of many civlizations before us. I tried to find the source of our madness and ending up putting it into a book form. The Trinity Matrix 2012 (at http://www.scribd.com)is an attempt to identify ‘the brain of the beast’, i feel that if enough people see the pattern mentioned in the book then human awareness of self and our universe will be able to improve and sustain our civilization. Please have a read, it is free of cost.

Great blog Jo, and your work on debunking climate pseudo-science is amongst the best.

Here’s one for you to explore then, I’m calling it “minushalfgate”

This must yet be the simplest and easiest debunk of the greenhouse gas / back-radiation effect hypothesis there is…

I use arbitrary units and scales for illustrative purposes.

The greenhouse gas / back radiation effect, which is at the core of the global warming scam, says that upwelling heat energy from the surface is absorbed and some re-radiated back to the surface, further warming it.

This hypothesis is the greatest and simplest maths error the world has ever known.

This is it…

- When 1 unit of energy is lost from the surface, its temperature drops by 1 unit.
- CO2 absorbs and retransmits a portion back to the surface, the ‘back radiation’.
- As the re-radiated energy is in random, i.e. all directions, a maximum of 0.5 units can be downward, i.e. back radiated. Let’s call that 0.x.
- The hypothesis sums these two, 1 + 0.x = 1.x, i.e. >1 and therefore warming.

This is completely WRONG!

The calculation should be -1 + 0.x = <1, i.e. cooling. The lost unit MUST be counted as -1 (minus 1) and not +1 (plus 1).

This corrected calculation also does not make any assumption about the atmospheric composition, and doesn’t need to. Even if the atmosphere were 100% CO2, the back radiation could not be >0.5, so even 100% CO2 could not heat the surface!

The maths error is to assume the surface still has that unit of energy, where it has lost it. The maths error creates this unit of energy out of nothing, which is impossible.

This means that the hypothesis debunks itself, so other correct hypothesis needed.

This is why I called it:- minushalfgate

[Did you forget where that original 1 unit comes from and continues to come from during daylight hours? mod oggi]

I read in ACIM that to totaly understand something you must understand the totality.
Many influences affect the earths surface temperature and much of the disagreement on the subject is because there are so many influences and it is all too easy to overlook one or more of them.
I have a question for a scientist who can answer me this; If the weight of the atmosphere increased by 0.15% how much would the avg temp at the surface increase? I haven’t heard this discussed but if man is increasing the weight of the atmosphere then AGW is real even if the green house effect is totally illusionary.
steve bunn, perth WA 26/1/2013

[...] JoNova runs the hugely popular award winning Skeptical Science blog JoNova in Australia, with a World wide readership. She is the author of The Skeptics Handbook, now translated into 16 languages. [...]

I have been skeptical about the proposition that there is dangerous anthropogenic global warming pretty much since it was first raised in the 80s. I have always been a “weather nerd” and I soon realised that many of the statements made about dangerous warming were either not true or being made by people unqualified to comment. However, I am a person of the moderate political left. I vote for the Australian Labor Party. It is kind of disturbing that the global warming debate has become a highly charged rhetorical debate between the left and the right – it should be a scientific debate. When politicians bring in emissions trading schemes and carbon taxes they are doing it on the advice of their senior scientists. What they are doing might be pointless, but it is in a way quite honorable. I guess the polarisation between left and right over this issue is inevitable, but it doesn’t produce a well-reasoned debate. The green movement has a lot to offer in helping to protect the natural environment but i fear it will be held up to ridicule if the promised dangerous global warming fails to materialise. Any way I just thought I’d offer an alternative perspective from a sceptic on the left.

Part of the reason things are so horribly politicized is that left leaning journalists have failed us badly. By not reporting both sides of the story, and doing their best to supress skeptical voices they have let down the left-leaning politicians they think they are helping. Politicians of the left and right have funded unskeptical scientists to advise them of unskeptical things. Politicans could have avoided the mess by being skeptical of the media and seeking out opposing views themselves (“know thine enemy” is always good advice). But they didn’t.

Hence an error cascade of horrible proportions means vested interests creamed money while well intentioned but lazy politicians and journalists assumed someone else had done the rigorous honest questioning. Many people mistook “denier” for a scientific term, and scandalous amounts of money have been wasted trying to change the weather.

If you have questions about the science, we’re only to happy to answer them. Sadly, due to anonymous trolls who toss names and refuse honest answers, many commenters here may assume you don’t have good intentions, but I will do my best to keep discussions polite and friendly. They are the most valuable discussions of all. Indeed, I’d host a special thread if you are keen, and ask everyone to tone down the language.

I see a lot of similarities between the complicated science of climate and the complicated science of weight loss. After hundreds of millions of dollars being spent studying hundreds of thousands of people over the last 100 yrs we still have an obesity epidemic that has only got worse since the 1980s when scientific consensus told us that low fat diets are good for us. Since then smoking has decreased but heart disease has increased. When a subject is as complicated as climate or weight loss it is all too easy to study a small part of the puzzle and come to any conclusion you want to. From what I have read a low CO2 diet is not going to improve the health of the planet. It’s so frustrating hearing politicians like Oblama spout lines like “We haven’t got time to discuss the science with the flat-earthers.” Frustrating because too many will believe him. steve bunn, perth

Were there any allegations of academic misconduct lodged with UWA re Lewandowsky? I live near Bristol where he has pitched up and am trying (but failing) to point out to them that they have employed a charlatan.

What I’d like to see from Jo is an engagement with climate scientists. What I see on this site is lots of commentary, speculation, opinion, and attempts to influence opinion …most of it in disagreement with the science being published. What I don’t see here is any meaningful attempt to engage with the science. In its place is cherry-picking and misinterpretation. There is a huge question mark about the credibility of this site.

1. Read my link The Evidence. I’m not in disagreement with most published papers. I’m in disagreement with a government committee that reviews the ones it wants and ignores the ones it doesn’t.

2. Engagement with climate scientists? I’ve done a 5 part debate with Dr Glickson, who is welcome to send part 6, but hasn’t. I’ve emailed Prof Andy Pitman, before I even started blogging, but when I asked, he refused to let me publish the emails. The people running scared from a debate are not the skeptics.

Look, I don’t know what to say. I followed the link to The Evidence – thanks.

I politely suggest you check your refs. I realise you’re not submitting to peer review, but it would be good to understand why some of the papers you cite next to a claim say nothing in support, or contradict the claim.

“…reviews the ones [papers] it wants and ignores the ones it doesn’t” is cognitive dissonance.

Similar dissonance when giving an example of engaging with climate scientists in a debate where you make a call-to-action, “It’s time for universities to be called to order, and shamed for their pathetic standards of logic and reason.”

Gentle Tramp[Thank you for the reference. I think Jo already knows about this movie, but I will check] -Fly
[Thanks. No I didn't know of this. Interesting. Always best if you post a long video to give us a short description about it. More people will watch and it's easier for mods to release it. It is a good documentary. Cheers! - Jo]

I agree with Jo that when promoting this video, a short commentary would be helpful as it is long, but so useful to see. Better yet, the producers of that video should include a blurb under the screen. What I can’t believe, however, is that only 688 people have viewed it since it’s been up 8 months.

In JoNova’s main site, Dec 17 post, “Two high school students take on teacher over climate and win standing ovation”, there are now over 260 comments. Mine was #55 about indoctrination rules that should apply when showing the Gore film. I have now posted these rules onto my own blog

BBC run a piece blaming flooding in Somerset, UK on Global Warming. Only intended as a poop n scoot limited visibility propaganda item (disappears after 24hrs on BBC iPlayer) – ripped and YouTubed for posterity 18m30s in is the “good bit” here :

As there presumably are thousands of scientists who are 97% agreed that AGW is an issue, would it be a worthwhile project to gather the names and qualifications in relevant fields of your respondents. I have been an ardent follower of your blog for some years. I have noticed that most of your commenters appear to have a good grasp of the issues raised and appear to be scientists in a variety of fields.
To have such a list would further enhance the status and authority of your blog.
Just a thought!

Go girl! I only just chanced your blog page this evening. I’ve been a long standing in principle supporter of David Evans and now find that he’s your hubby. How wonderful!
Keep on giving it to the deceivers of the left who don’t value the truth, only the fulfilment of their pre-supposed ideas on how life should be and their struggle (jihad) to twist and turn the facts to their own ends. Don’t let them off hook.
Unfortunately, there’s very few honest people in the public domain, and so when I see you, Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, Piers Ackerman, Mike Smith and others of like mind, then I’m always interested in what you have to say, and to support as much as I am able.
To bring this country around we have to make sure that our children are not brainwashed with the politically correct garbage that is disseminated by the left in school curricula-especially in the history/humanities. Too many young minds are being deceived and corrupted by the agendas that are being set in place by the socialist left. It’s wicked. Parents who take the time and make the effort to understand what is happening to our world must remain the primary educators of their children.

you have been writing about Mr. Murry Salby recently. Do you know, where he lives now or how I can contact him ? I listened to his speech in Hamburg april 2013. As I read on his problems after the journey to Europe I would like to find out, whether he is fine again.
best regards Petra Vooth Germany
[I have forwarded your comment to Murry, and hope to get news myself soon. - Jo]

As an ex BOM Observer of over three decades, l agree, these climate fools have trashed the BOM’s reputation. It makes me cry to see the observations that have been performed by competent, well trained dedicated career weather observers over many decades have been altered by the desk bound climate despots who have never worked at a weather station all their lives and who cant even recognise cloud types or even perform a weather observation.[Please resubmit this to the current thread, where it would be more appropriate.] Fly

We are keen to hear from weather observers. And it’s fine if you need to be anonymous. I understand. We would very much like to hear more from you, and so will other commenters on the newer threads. The comment will disappear in this thread, which would be a shame. – Jo

Say no more! Quoted by someone with a Bachelor’s in English lit! Because people who haven’t published on climate science are the best possible resources for information on climate science. Click through for a whole day’s worth of howlers.

[Daniel, read the guide to commenting at this site. This comment is an ad hominem, that is, a personal attack. (How unscientific). If you care what qualifications high profile commentators on climate science have, you should at least start with the Chairman of the IPCC, or Al Gore, or Tim Flannery, or Clive Hamilton. - Mod]

[...] globally by a recent study, along with with Watt’s Up With That and Climate Audit. On her About page she says “A long time ago she was a Green, and still wants to save the world, but with the [...]

Pointing out the absence of relevant qualifications within a discipline that demands expertise is not ad hominem. You have appealed to James Delingpole of all people, and we have a right to point out how misguided that is. He has no formal qualifications in climate science and it is self-evident in his writings. One could go seriatim and debunk each of his claims, but I suspect you would just call this ad hominem as well…

Best,

Daniel

————–
Daniel, if I’m barking mad and all wrong, it’ll be easy to explain why. That would be a scientific debate. Do join us and give it your best shot. But if you can’t, perhaps you don’t know what you are talking about? (Like with rhetoric eh? Attacking quals is absolutely the pure ad hominem argument). Any time you want to talk science, you’re welcome. – Jo

The fact that you moderate your comments and clip out those which you deem inconvenient to your cherished narrative says it all really. The only other places on the internet you find such draconian comment moderation (or no commenting system at all) are creationist websites.
Daniel, I’ve been away from the desk a lot in Jan. I don’t recall ever seeing or snipping your entropy link, though I’m the one who approved your last comment even though the mods were correct that it was ad hom and in the wrong place. I note that we’re so scared of waivingentropy that we’ve published your site link in your signature twice, and let through the link to desmog as well. The mods are trying to get you to comment on a thread where others will see it and respond (isn’t that what you want?). You’ve ignored them, and persistently misunderstand ad hominem (which you keep making). All that breaches site rules, yet still we published you. If you’d responded as the mdos requested they would have approved it – Jo.

You also continue to miss my point about qualifications. No, they are not all that matters. But if you have no formal quals *AND* what you put out there is so egregiously mistaken in said science for which you have no quals, then we should steer a wide course around those people. They are not reliable sources. Enter James Delingpole. His background is in literature, as far from the regime of relevance to climate science as you could possibly get. Moreover, this is borne out repeatedly in his posts, which lob elementary error after elementary error and which distort the details in obvious ways.

As usual you have an empty hand when it comes to evidence of “elementary errors”. This is all logical fallacy, bluster and no fact. You are not making a scientific case. – Jo

So the fact that you thump Delingpole in support of your view tells us everything we need to know about your reliability. This is not ad hominem to point this out. We would make the same conclusion about an evolution-denier who cited Kent Hovind.

Best,

- Daniel

1. Presume “thump” in your lingo means “like”.
2. It is ad hom, and you do it via argument from authority and then also by association. A triple fallacy. If man A has no “authority” and makes alleged but undescribed mistakes, then man B may never refer to Man A for any argument (you say) because all things Man A ever said are now “proved” wrong. If Man B supports Man A on any point, then Man B is then also “proved” wrong. By this method only people approved by the government and licensed as “experts” may discuss ideas in public.
3. I’m sorry this took a couple of days to approve, but on a 6 year old inactive thread, that hardly matters. Given that you break site rules in at least two ways, I guess you’ll be grateful. – Jo

Here is the mod comment for Daniel, which the mod took the time to add inside his held comment so he could read it. I’m posting it to show how much effort the mods took to try to help him. – Jo

[Hi Daniel - this comment wont be posted for two reasons. Firstly, the 'About' section of Jo Nova's blog is meant to be 'About Jo Nova', there is ample opportunity to discuss specific issues about climate science either as the topics come up, or when we have an 'Open Thread' weekend. Secondly, we prefer posters who add a link to describe what is at the link and how it is relevant to the argument. Not to just give our readers a referral to some off sight reading. What you have done is basically linked to your manifesto. This isn't appropriate, though if in a particular topic you want to quote something relevant from your web site you are free to do so, and then add the link for anyone who wants to pursue the source. I hope that clarifies matter for you.

On a couple of other matters:
1. Moderators are voluntary and are simply here to keep the blog respectable and on topic. We use a little discretion for new users, and regular commentators, but if you haven't read the rules about posting you should. We certainly do not snip any views which meet the posting guidelines, we prefer to allow readers to have debates. I doubt you would find a more open blog site in climate science anywhere with the 'alarmist' cites commonly blocking and snipping inconvenient material. You are welcome to post you comments in support of the so called consensus when appropriate matters come up for discussion.

2. If you attack a persons qualifications rather than their argument, then that most certainly is an ad hominem - an attack on the man. Coincidentally James Delingpole in the chapter titled 'Experts as Ideologues'. He writes that whenever someone wants to prove he has nothing useful to add to the climate science debate, they ask what qualifications he has. He happily admits he achieved a 'B' in Physics 'O' Level and has an MA in English Language and Literature from Oxford. He writes that in his experience you are right to be concerned because there is a terrifying correlation between English Literature Degrees and off-the-scale-ignorance about the environment.

For example he points out BBC environmental commentator and gatekeeper against any skeptical viewpoints getting through to the BBC read English Literature at Cambridge. Caroline Lucas, Britain's first Greens MP, "who once claimed in all seriousness that flying on a holiday is as bad as knifing someone in the street...." Guess what qualification she has? Tasmin Omond "the Westminster educated Baronets grand-daughter turned hardcore activist once dumped a truckload of horse poo on Jeremy Clarckson's doorstep in protest at his environmental correctness also has English Lit qualifications. So too does Baroness Worthington from Friends of the Earth and architect of the 2008 British Climate Change Act also excelled in English and English Lit. Our own Tim Flannery has an undergraduate degree in English Literature before doing his doctorate in small animal palaeontology and he was our Climate Commissioner. In fact the climate activist side of the debate is full of non climate science qualified people from the IPCC Chairman to the Nobel Prize winning Al Gore, so I am sure James Delingpole would be happy to shut up on the subject if only those on the other side would. But he points out that he doesn't have to have a science degree to work out that what the peer reviewed reports say and what the synthesised IPCC reports and press releases say are two different things. He doesn't have to have a science degree to work out when a climate alarmist is avoiding or obfuscating a hard question. And his English skills probably better qualify him to pick up contradictory information coming from the so called climate experts.

3. When you find a way to equate a skeptic with an evolution denier in a twisted analogy, that too would be considered an ad hominem.

Everything after that is bullshit. You don’t get to tout your own horn as one of the more “open blogs” on the internet and in the next breath delete my comment while snipping out the links in my previous comments. This is unfettered hypocrisy.

Nope, if the shoe fits, wear it. The only other place I have seen these tactics is on creationist websites. I will be sharing my experiences here with colleagues and with anyone who ever references “JoNova” going forward.

Best,

- Daniel

[would you please also share with your colleagues that you are too thick to realize that you are posting in the wrong place and that is why it isn't going to be published? jeezzzsh! Rant and wail all you want but do it in a CURRENT THREAD! dumb dumb dumb dumb] ED

Daniel, we note you failed to provide a single scientific argument as requested and went for the “threat” instead. (Good luck with that ).

We were trying to help you make sensible arguments and post your links in places where they would be seen and discussed. The mods didn’t think your uninformed rants were worth posting, but I thank you. You help show how aggressive and unscientific this debate is.

As a long time follower of the very one sided debate on ‘climate change’, my worry is that there is a very real possibility that the earth will in fact substantially cool due to diminished solar activity. Then, rather than removing Co2, we will in fact need every little molecule of the gas to help fend of this event.

God willing that both the author’s of the quoted report and me are wrong!

Global Warming fraud will continue until real scientist, lawyers and media address ENERGY STAR, and “government energy efficiency” scam which is funneling tens of billions to the EPA’s Billionaires Club.
Where was the outrage when EPA removed the 4th Building Block (energy efficiency) from the Clean Power Plan, replacing it with the Clean Energy Incentive Program, a Pay-To-Play scheme that has been operating for years as Save Energy Now?
This $100 billion Ponzi scheme has 24 federal universities providing “free” audits of industrial facilities, and claiming to have saved billions for large corporations willing to partner with EPA. All conducted without the benefit of a National Standard for measuring & verifying energy savings in technologies.What is electrical energy efficiency? How would you measure it? Or does this multi-billion dollar question really matter?
When will you speak about the scientific research & technical reports conducted by the Poised For Profits Partnership, the 12 bureaucracies that turned ENERGY STAR into a multi-billion dollar industry? Who will stand up for math & science?

Hullo from distant Sweden. I am active in the free and open Swedish network http://www.klimatsans.com for balanced, factual climate information. I have also published two books on the history, processes and driving forces of Earth’s climate: “Solen driver vårt klimat” in Dec. 2013, and “Tänk om det blir kallare?” this October. Further, I was co-organizer of a climate conference in Sweden on Oct 8, initiated by Fred Goldberg and the Norwegian association Klimarealistene. Sadly, Fred passed away on Nov. 6, but we carry on his efforts.
I should much appreciate a direct e-mail contact with you and David for further exchange of views and facts. Thanks in advance, Tege

Karl
[Karl, thank you so much! I'm sorry you are having trouble with the donation link. I'm going to leave your message here in moderation so that Joanne will see it and get back to you. You are not a bother!] ED

I love that her bio still mentions ClimateGate. Whether you agree or disagree with the politics of Global Warming, we should expect to get the best facts. Investigations into the hacked emails revealed that there was no wrongdoing done on part of the science or scientists. It also clarified exactly what the scientists were talking about when highlighting certain numbers or not. The scientists however, did not fabricate any of the data. Both her and Sean Hannity owe an apology for making such a big deal about it, but then not correcting themselves when no wrong doing was found. Additionally the findings from the investigation did not change the scientific consensus on a carbon link to climate change. Politifact has a very good breakdown on the email non-scandal.

Another detail left out about carbon is that even if carbon is not causing an increase in global temperatures, it is largely responsible for many other devastating problems. Carbon dioxide is responsible for ocean acidification, currently decimating our coral reefs and any species with a calcium based shell. Lobsters, crabs, krill and other shelled animals at the bottom of the food chain are being born with softer and softer shells. Animals with shells are essentially being dissolved by the carbon diffusing into the ocean. Aside from people that enjoy shellfish, it affects the entire food chain based on their survival. There are many good articles available on this topic as well.

Even if you disagree that carbon is an issue with climate you should be against carbon emissions as a part of overall health of the planet in these other regards. While I don’t find all of the information on this blog to be incorrect, I feel it irresponsibly makes carbon and fossil fuel emissions seem like “no big deal”, and I feel that is dishonest as it is well documented this is not the case.
[Joe, people who use “tricks” to hide declines are not acting scientifically, no matter how many whitewash committees approve. The ocean isn’t acid, and isn’t going to be. Corals survived thousands of hotter summers than this one. You won’t get much discussion on this thread, so why not pop on to other threads and enlighten us whenever you see something that’s wrong? It would be irresponsible of you not too, wouldn’t it? — Jo

I would appreciate your comments. I am trying to fact check the views of a friend who is adamant about the reality of man-made global warming, based on the views of Brian Dunning.

My friend says: “We can directly measure the source of heat in our atmosphere through spectroscopy. The Greenhouse window that lets the planet’s heat out has been slowly and consistently closing without fluctuation over the last 200 years in a very specific part of the spectrum related to the Carbon 12 which is 99% manmade.”

“Temperatures go up and down in different parts of the globe because the weather stirs the troposphere in complex ways, but if less and less heat can escape the world because of manmade gasses, then the world can only be getting hotter due to mankind. Conclusion, there is direct indisputable evidence that the temperature has been rising in the past 200 years due to the amount Carbon 12 that human activity releases in the atmosphere. As this evidence is independent and indisputable, any other reports, models or predictions are irrelevant. Simple maths, and simple logic. No statistics or models.”

I don’t know what to think about this. It sounds too simple to me, but I’m not sure what is wrong with his argument or what is missing. He also insists that the issue of climate feedback is not relevant. I’m curious how you would respond. Is his reasoning correct or not?

Their models do very complicated sums to try to figure out what the overall effect of partly blocking one pipe, but they make a stupid assumption, get the architecture wrong, and completely miss that most of the extra energy trapped by CO2 will quickly get to space through water vapor, the most common and dominant greenhouse gas.

28 million radiosondes show that this is what is happening. The fact that the warming paused when every model said it wouldn’t fits with this other more advanced view.
Read David Evans work if you want to understand where the flaws are in their models and how they were right about the greenhouse effect of CO2, but wrong about their feedbacks.

Thanks Fly. I’m still confused however. Would be interested in some information about the ‘Greenhouse window’ myself. Brian Dunning calls it the ‘infrared window’ in the podcast my friend recommended: The Simple Proof of Man-Made Global Warming

I have an update from my friend who accuses me of “debating other people’s model based postulates”. He asks me 3 leading questions:

1. Greenhouse Effect: Do you agree that if the greenhouse gasses of Carbon 12 is increasing while other greenhouse gasses remain constant, then less heat can escape our planet?

2. Global Warming: Do you agree that if less heat can escape our planet than is entering our atmosphere, then regardless of what the weather models show, there must logically be a continuous net gain of heat?

3. Manmade Cause: Do you agree that if 99% of the increase in Carbon 12 is due to humans burning fossil fuels, and only 1% of the rest is natural, then humans are the main cause?

Other greenhouse gases are not staying constant. The big climate models assume that the water vapor level at 10km up will thicken. (That’s the hot spot that all models predicted would be there but 28 million weather balloons definitively showed did not occur).

All energy flows to space eventually like a river flowing down hill. When we put a rock in front of a stream it will only slow the stream if there is no easy route around the rock. But the energy has other ways to escape to space so it finds them. The net total effect of CO2 is a small warming of about 0.25C per doubling. Hence totally safe, probably beneficial and not worth spending any dollars to prevent.

Thanks Jo, you are very kind! I will read the links with great interest. Until then may I try to recap your response? Briefly, the notion that an ‘infrared window’ is narrowed by an increase in CO2 is correct but simplistic and misleading, since other routes exist for energy transfer. And though there is a slight temperature increase linked to increasing CO2, it is very small (0.25C per doubling). Is this a fair representation?

Also, you describe Dunning’s view as simplistic. But does this nevertheless mean his basic factual claims are correct as far as they go, but incomplete? viz: (1) “We can carbon date the CO2 in the atmosphere, and tell exactly how much of it comes from humans burning fossil fuels“, which he says adds about 29 billion tonnes of Carbon 12 per year, and (2) Through spectroscopy we know “which wavelengths of heat energy are being trapped by gases in the atmosphere, and which wavelengths are escaping” and that satellites show “within that infrared window defined by water vapor, there is one big spike. It is the 15 µm range of CO2.”

One more question please? Since Dunning claims we can measure energy loss so accurately, I wonder why the ‘rerouted’ energy loss you explain is not accounted for in his summary of satellite evidence? After all, he claims that measurements of the infrared spectrum from space allow us to “see exactly where in the spectrum any change has occurred“. I have no idea, but is he making exaggerated claims here? Is it in fact possible to measure net global energy loss?
Again many thanks.

1. Fair representation. Thanks.
2. I didn’t say anything about the claims of how much humans contribute to atmospheric CO2. That’s a totally different question, and scientifically has nothing to do with your first most important point. Be aware it’s not easy – fossil fuel = dead plants — There isn’t a lot of difference (just 2.6%) in the ratios of C13 to C12 in plants versus fossil fuels.
3. Spectroscopy is real, and shows that there is probably extra CO2 in the atmosphere. We know that already. David analyzed the whole range of frequencies. Read his work for more on that.
4. We can’t measure global energy loss that accurately. It’s quite hard, the satellites degrade over time, and the instruments we used in past decades are different. Even if we could do it now (which is a very worthy aim), we don’t have long term records. I wish we had good data. If you look closely at the water vapor band (figure 2) you will see there is monster noise (zig zaggy lines). It is not a “neat chunk” but a series of overlapping spikes. Very hard to calculate area of accurately. To really get an idea of how futile it is look for the word bellamy in davids post and follow that link to see the last graph on that page!

[Jason, please don't take offense, the mods have to deal with people who pretend to be interested. There are a lot of fakes out there. -- Jo]

[I did not accuse you of fake questions. I accuse you of pretending. Pretending to be naive, using a shill (I have a friend) to cover your own contempt. I might be wrong and I encourage you to prove that.] ED

Hello from Florida. Have the theories of Dr. David Evans been peer reviewed? I have been away from this subject for a while and cannot find an email address for you or your husband. I am a supporter of his work. Thanks.

Steve, it has been. Published in an elsevier collection. It came out in the US election campaign. I will be announcing it and getting back to that work soon. – Jo

Just found your website today while looking for better information on the history of global temperatures, specifically the past 1000 years. As a retried Mechanical Engineer I have need a skeptical about the “so called” global warming that, now retired, and where I have more time to study the various viewpoints I found your website. I found it easy to read and understand. Thanks.i have been considering starting a blog of my own and one part of that blog would statements on global warming. I hope to read more of your articles i the future and I may be able to restate some of your writing with my own viewpoint but will gladly reference your work. Again thanks

In April, 2014, you published a great letter called “How to Convert Me to Your New Religion of Global Warming in 14 Easy Steps”. I don’t know who the original author was. I would like to use this letter as a basis for rebuttal of some of my “progressive” friends who are fanatical advocates of Global Warming (aka Climate Change, aka Climate Disruption and now Eco-Justice or whatever the latest catch-phrase is). Specifically I would like to update it, add more examples and science and use phrases that are more appropriate to the America Left.

Today Dr. Judith Curry just posted the sixth paper in a series by a paleogeologist, I think, publishing anonymously (for the usual reasons) as “Javier” on the climatic influence of the ~2,400 year Bray I(or Hallstadt) cycle. He has been developing a pretty extensive foundation for global temperature variations related to or dependent on Solar Grand Minima.

In the back of my mind I have intended to watch for the conclusions David Evans may have reached in his research. I wondered if you or he have been following Javier’s papers at Climate, etc.?

As we go into a maunder type solar minimum with very low solar activity, cosmic rays will be increasing, causing more precipitation. If you haven’t seen it, he is a good video about the theory of cosmic rays, which is now more widely being accepted.

Why are weather forecasters not telling us what is causing all the flooding in BC, Canada. To me it is obvious. They can only tell us weather events caused by CO2 and global warming.

As we go into a maunder type solar minimum with very low solar activity, cosmic rays will be increasing, causing more precipitation. If you haven’t seen it, he is a good video about the theory of cosmic rays, which is now more widely being accepted.